Writers of the World! What are you working on?

It's an open universe setting hosted on shifti.org

I wrote a lot of terrible stories in it (that I've had retconned away), and have been rebooting my contributions to the series.

A couple years ago, one of the co-creators, a man named Robotech_Master, was killed in a Hit & Run... A emotionally devastating loss to the community to say the least. My little reboot project how now evolved into me trying not to let the flame die out as the other co-creator can't bring herself to touch the setting anymore (She still likes talking about it and is glad it's still being worked on, but, actually writing it.... a little too much for her at this time)

Anyway, it's on that website as I said, but to give you a run down.. it's about 500 years in the future when Mankind has recovered from an Apocalypse triggered by the end of the Oil Ages (Known as the Post-Oil Dark Ages), and taken to the stars. Although Earth (a terrible place to live as it's still in ruins and has a strict government, it's still a popular vacation spot for those who want to see the Human Homeworld) is still the seat of humanity's Government, though given how long it takes to travel between worlds they're not as able to enforce their policies on other worlds.

It's been discovered many worlds have a "Meta Material", minerals that go beyond what normal minerals are capable of and can seemingly do what those in previous eras would have considered magic. Little is known about these, outside of how to make use of them.

The main planet that FreeRIDErs takes place on is called "Zharus", and on Zharus there exist two meta materials, Sarium and Qubitite. Previously Zharus was a dumping ground for Earth's undesirables, an inhospitable desert planet with a metal shortage full of this stuff called Qubitite which ruins most equipment... That was until they realized they just weren't using this stuff correctly, once they realized how it worked it become a whole new ballgame. Zharus is now a post-scarcity utopia, especially now that this Q Technology has been invested in by Joe Steader, a billionaire who got rich recovering popculture media from Earth's past, restoring it to a format that can be enjoyed on devices of the time, and selling it as the "Latest thing". Joe's efforts have caused Zharus to develop a popculture known as "Twencen", where it's trendy to indulge in ideas, themes, and aesthetics of the 21st Century.

Got all that? breathes

Moving on, the series is named after the RIDEs, the Reticulated Intelligence Drive Extender. At one point there was a war over whether or not to share this technology with other worlds, in order to wage this war a new form of power armor well equipped for the Gondwanna (The largest continent on the planet) Desert, aka the Dry Ocean, nicknamed "The Billion Year Drought" due to its harshness, ran by a new form of AI caused by digitally recreating an animal brain and increasing its intelligence until it can act as a quantum super computer capable of interfacing with the human user directly, and performing commands as fast as the human can think of them.

RIDEs have a drawback, it turns out RIs aren't as adaptable as human ones are. So for a perfect sync, or "fuse", the human needs to be similar enough to the RIDE and changing the human is easier than changing the RIDE. So to accomplish this, RIDEs are equipped with fast acting nanites guided by the RI to make the humans more compatible. So you can tell who uses a RIDE and who doesn't, because those who do will typically have some animalistic feature (usually a tail or animal ears) created by their RIDE to aid with fusing.

Most of the series takes place in the aftermath of this conflict (Known as the Nextus-Sturmhaven War, named for the two regions that lead the conflict against one another), when RIDEs have entered civilian use after being sold as Military Surplus.

This has caused some interesting social changes, as RI due to being based on animal minds, do indeed have genders. Remember what I said about compatibility and having to change the user to match the RIDE? Well, I think you've read enough to know where this is going!

If one attempts a merge with a RIDE of the opposite gender, you will become that gender. Yes, that gender, not just that sex. RIDE Changes go pretty deep, and are capable of not only altering your body, but your very gender identity (to avoid dysphoria and to perfect the connection).

Due to the human body not being designed to be shifted about like this, and the fact that nanites have a cooldown period, major changes require at least three years before they can be properly reversed. So if you are genderbent by a RIDE, there's no going back for three years. The phenomenon of people using a RIDE of the opposite persuasion and becoming said persuasion has been affectionately dubbed "Crossriding", and forcing someone to Crossride is a crime known as "Genderjacking" which carries a different penalty depending on the city-state/polis. (Each polis has their own hat, Sturmhaven is a matriarchy, Nextus is a bureaucracy, Cape Nord is a patriarchy, Uplift is academic, Aloha is hedonistic, and so on and so forth)

Crossriding has lead to many aspects of gender roles and heteronormativity becoming things of the past, especially since due to RIDEs being military surplus and most soldiers in the military being men, female civilian RIDEs typically cost much less than male civilian RIDEs.. So for some, fulfilling the desire to join the RIDE community may come with some, necessary sacrifices to keep it affordable.

This is the story of the Planet Zharus, and all the shenanigans that result because of everything I just said.

And if it sounds interesting to you, the series can be read here - https://shifti.org/wiki/FreeRIDErs_(setting) - It's entirely non-profit and is open to anyone who wants to read or write in it. We also have a discord, well it's more for the shifti as a whole, but we have an FR discussion setting since it's one of our universes.

Sorry I didn't mean to go full "Used Car Salesman" on you, but there's a LOT of backstory to this one which makes it hard to explain in just a paragraph.

Anyway, I'm working on a prequel story to explain the origins of one of the antagonists I created.... Which has become its own novel at this point, I had finished it, but the ending didn't sit well with me or my test-reader so I'm redoing the final chapter.